Tear up the calendar you bought, throw the pieces to the sky

Back to the grind today - first day back at work in 2 weeks. All that sittin' by the pool relaxation gone already - funny how work will do that to you.

Thanks to my checking email a couple of times while I was gone, and the amazing Outlook ThreadCompressor tool, I only had 149 email messages to wade through this morning. I diligently processed my email and by the end of the day, I had only 18 left. For all you time-management-system junkies out there (you know who you are!), check out Take Back Your Life by Sally McGhee. I'm not plugging this book because it's from Microsoft Press. This woman's company used to teach a class called "Managing Action" (yes, it sounds cheesy) at Microsoft where they'd teach you this "system" of processing your email and using your calendar and tasks in Outlook more efficiently. It rocks. And the book is super easy to read and even better than the class. They no longer offer the class at Microsoft - rumor has it that people would re-take the class multiple times in order to clear out their Inbox (you spend the day in class actually working on your stuff). I'm not sure that's really true, but it sounds like something people might do.

Now that the wedding stuff is (mostly) done, I may be able to get back to making this system work for me. It does take about an hour a week just to keep it up and keep things organized but the more you use it, the more things become easy to maintain.

Thanks to the Seattle PI, I got to find out early who lost on 'American Idol' today. I'll give you a hint - it wasn't Bo. Woo hoooooooo!